UNITED NATIONS,
December 30 – Antonio Guterres'
year as UN Secretary General began
by telling UN staff how much
he respected them, but ended
with Guterres on vacation
while the UN budget was cut
and staff ousted
from their work-spaces,
demoralized and disrespected.

In between
Guterres delayed
for months in responding to
the slaughter of the Rohingya
in Myanmar, out of too much
deference to Aung San Suu Kyi.
Guterres continued in Yemen
with a Saudi-biased envoy
Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed as
ports were closed, children
starved and cholera spread.
Pressured to respond to the
Anglophone crisis in Cameroon,
his response was a brief
stop-over in Yaounde where he
accepted a golden statue from
35-year president Paul Biya.

In November
alone, Guterres ignored
evidence that his Deputy Amina
J. Mohammed undermined
environmental protection, at a
minimum, in signing 4000
certificates for endangered rosewood
exported from Nigeria and
Cameroon to China, then
ignored a UN bribery
indictment in the courts of
Lower Manhattan. Guterres' UN
used $1 million from the China
Energy Fund Committee of indicted
Patrick Ho even after the
Press asked his spokesman
about the indictment - and
still no audit.

But little
coverage either: Guterres
eschewed press conference,
holding none at the end of the
year, but allowed himself to
be sold for $1200 a pop at a
fundraiser on Wall Street in
mid-December. Inner City
Press, which covered the
event, is launching a series
on Guterres' performance as UN
Secretary General, even as he
and his head of “Global
Communications” Alison
Smale keep Inner City
Press more restricted than
no-show no-question state
media like Egypt's
Akhbar al Yom, assigned the
work-space it long shared
along with the alternative Free
UN Coalition for Access,
pushing for a UN
Freedom of Information Act.

A spotlight must
be shined on this UN. Here a review
of 2017, month by month.

January -
February: In Antonio Guterres'
first two months as UN
Secretary General, the
longstanding Cyprus talks
began to fall apart,
and Guterres stood silent
as Burundi, for example, banned
access by UN officials.
Guterres ignored a protest by
whistleblowers against Francis
Gurry of the UN World
Intellectual Property
Organization, and that UN
agency's work on North Korea's
cyanide patents.

He did nothing
about a UN waste dump exposed
by Inner City Press in the
Central African Republic,
despite his predecessor Ban
Ki-moon's record with waste in
Haiti and elsewhere. While he
announced that Kenyan troops
would head back to South Sudan
to join UN Peacekeeping, he
appointed the fifth
Frenchman in a row to head
this DPKO, Jean-Pierre
Lacroix.

Meanwhile he was
rebuffed in his attempt to
appoint Fayyad to head the
UN's Libya mission, perhaps
explaining his refusal later
in the year to take a single
press question after reading
out his canned statement on
Jerusalem. In a harbinger of
his approach to UN corruption
and (non) reform, his UN was
named as not providing
requested documents in the first
UN bribery case, of Ng Lap
Seng. (In the second case, of
Patrick Ho and Cheikh Gadio,
Guterres has yet to even
launch an audit).

February 2017
ended with a seeming second
wind, the belated arrival of
Guterres deputy Amina J.
Mohammed. Inner City Press was
throughout constructive;
it would later emerge that
during the delay Mohammed
signed 4000 certificates for
endangered Nigerian and
Cameroonian rosewood already
exported to China, something
Guterres has refused to
investigate despite a petition
with 92,000 requests.
Guterres' first interaction
with UN staff was a Town Hall
meeting on January 9. Even
though it was on the UN's
public website, when Inner
City Press live-streamed it on
Periscope
for the impacted public to see
it received a threat that this
violated unspecified
UN's guidelines.

This has been a
pattern in Guterres' first
year: threats to Press for
unspecified violations, such
as that of Maher
Nasser on October 20,
and a total failure to respond
or reform by Nasser's boss, Alison
Smale. Ultimately,
Guterres is responsible.

March - April: The spring thaw
in Antonio Guterres' first
year as UN Secretary General,
in March and April, began to
reveal hypocrisy. A small but
telling example was when,
after Guterres called on
people all over the world to
turn off their lights for
Earth Hour, Inner City Press found
the lights on at the
UN-owned mansion on Sutton
Place where Guterres lives.

At first the UN
refused to answer Inner City
Press where Guterres was - Lisbon
- then accused it of “monitoring
the residence.” It's called
journalism: with the UN
refusing to disclose even what
country Guterres is in,
checking the residence is the
only way. The UN also refuses
to disclose how much these
Lisbon trips cost the global
taxpayers, for example how
many UN Security officials are
taken, where they stay and for
how much.

Likewise
Guterres' 2016 financial disclosure
differed significantly from
what he filed as head of UNHCR
in 2013. This has yet to be
explained. In April Guterres
was petitioned to replace the
UN's pro-Saudi Yemen
envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh
Ahmed. But when Inner City
Press asked, Guterres'
spokespeople refused to even
confirm receipt of the letter.

This happened on
a petition by staff
too, about retaliation by
Francis Gurry the head of the
UN World Intellectual Property
Organization, whose assistance
to North Korea's cyanide
patents Guterres did not act
on.

In late April,
Guterres did nothing as
Tanzania expelled
his resident coordinator, a
far cry from his knee-jerk
defense later in the year -
continuing on December
27 - of the 4000
rosewood signatures by his
Deputy SG Amina J. Mohammed.
Sustainable development? Try
hypocrisy, and censorship and
restriction of the Press which
covers it - and Cameroon, here. We'll have more
on this.

May - June: As Antonio
Guterres entered his fifth
month as UN Secretary General
in May 2017, there were still
no reforms, and even his
budget and reform speech was
withheld when Inner City Press
asked
for a copy of it.

Rather than
propose anything but
deck-chair moving changes in
UN bureaucracy - new acronyms,
new Departments - Guterres
seemed to believe his private
meetings and canned speeches
could do the trick. He met
with 11 Congressmembers in May
- all Democrats, Inner City
Press' inquiry found
- and gave a speech in South
Carolina. But to what
effect?

By year's end the
UN budget
would be cut by over $200
million with Guterres nowhere
in sight, already on vacation
in Lisbon, not even a comment
for two days. In the real
world, in South
Sudan for example,
leaked documents published by
Inner City Press showed
inaction as the SPLA moved
toward a violent reclaiming of
Pagak.

Amid the ongoing
crackdown in Burundi, the best
Guterres could do was a
Burkina Faso based envoy,
Michel Kafando, who would be
only part-time
Inner City Press learned
though Guterres didn't tell
the Security Council members
that. He never had a comment
on Morocco's crackdown in the
Rif,
despite dozens of questions
from Inner City Press, perhaps
thinking that silence might
help on Western
Sahara (it didn't).

On nuclear North
Korea, Guterres did nothing as
the UN Federal Credit Union
did business
with the mission and UN WIPO
helped with cyanide patents.

In continuing
Cameroon failure, Guterres'
Deputy SG Amina J. Mohammed
appeared at the ghoulish
“National Day” in a townhouse
on Manhattan's Upper East
Side; the Ambassador told
Inner City Press due to her
position on Biafra in “her”
Nigeria, she would never
support the Anglophones in
his. She has yet to answer
questions, initially
surprising but after the
rosewood scandal was revealed,
more problematic. Scandals
were coming...

July - August: Antonio Guterres
first summer as Secretary
General had a 14 day black
hole in it, in which not only
did he disappear but his
spokespeople refused at first
to confirm to Inner City Press
even were he was: the
Dalmatian coast.

He had failed on
Cyprus,
descending from the 38th floor
for a mere three minute
stakeout. He delegated the Cameroon
conflict, unwisely, to his Deputy
SG Amina J. Mohammed, who was
said by Paul Biya's Ambassador
to be in the bag, firmly
against any secession.

She had worked
for Ban Ki-moon, whose era at
the UN was indicted, and in
essence convicted, along with
Macau-based businessman Ng Lap
Seng at the end of July. But
Guterres doubled down in
impunity, claiming that the UN
was the victim of the scheme,
even as its accomplices
continued on the payroll.
Guterres' UN was accused of
racial discrimination in a
Town Hall meeting he closed to
the press - but what did he
care?

He dodged
questions about the crackdowns
in Togo
and Gabon and left, even at
year's end, the UN Special
Adviser on Africa position
empty. In Kenya he called
electoral official Msango's
murder an “untimely demise,”
alternately deferring to Ban
Ki-moon's pro-Kenyatta son in
law and then to his opposite,
Roslyn Akombe. Apparently,
Africa didn't and doesn't
interest him.

In Europe, he
supposed his group by ignoring
Catalonia, even as he let
sell-out Catalan Cristina “The
Evicter” Gallach stay on too
long as a representative to
the UN's school. Her
replacement Alison Smale was
late in coming, and surrounded
by the same staff like
Guterres, would continue the
same abuses and worse. The
Fall was approaching...

September - October:
Antonio Guterres'
first UN General Assembly
“high level” week as Secretary
General featured a grip and
grin with Egypt's
Sisi witnessed only by Sisi's
state media to whom Inner City
Press' office is assigned
under Guterres, a praise-fest
with Cameroon's Paul Biya
even as his forces killed
Anglophone civilians and a
total refusal to answer
questions on UN corruption.

During the week,
Haiti
called on Guterres to
belatedly do something about
the 10,000 people the UN
killed with cholera; Guterres
has raised very little money
and his envoy on the topic has
yet to take Press questions.

Even when
Guterres did, on September 13,
he answered only on
peacekeeper sexual abuse,
entirely evading Inner City
Press' question
about the six UN bribery
guilty verdicts in the case of
Ng Lap Seng, for coverage of
which Inner City Press was
evicted and is still
restricted under Guterres.
Other corrupt events and
bribery cases proceeded;
Guterres' Secretariat took on
a Junior Professional Officer
from Kim Jong-Un's North
Korea, while refusing to
confirm the name.

By October, with
his head of Global
Communications vowing to spin
the trip, Guterres took off
for Central African Republic,
refusing to answer why one of
the only three officials
criticized in the UN report on
sexual abuse there, Renner
Onana, remained in place, with
promotion. On the way back,
most tellingly, Guterres
stopped in Younde and took a
golden statue from Paul “The
Killer” Biya, smiling. This is
the symbol of Guterre's
Secretary Generalship....

November -
December 2017: As 2017 drew to a
close UN Secretary General
Antonio Guterres closed in on
himself, like a small star
collapsing, speaking only to
friendly or paid media,
accepting money from an
already-indicted
NGO then fleeing to Portugal,
where he ended the year as the
UN budget was cut. Was this
what he was elected or
selected for?

In early November
Inner City Press had already
just been threatened
for covering his photo ops noticed
after one a two-person lunch
set-up on the 38th floor with
the name plate, Gillian Tett.
But Guterres' spokesman - and
Ban K-moon's before that, who
does that - refused to say
what it was about.

It was an
interview, with Guterres
criticizing even the food at
the UN and showing up. It left
many UN staff and contractors
disgusted. But with the threat
of retaliation and many
guards, Guterres was unaware.

What did he care,
when 98,000 environmentalists
asked him to investigate his
Deputy Amina J. Mohammed for
signing CITES certificates for
endangered rosewood
from Nigeria and Cameroon
already in China? Rather than
investigate, Guterres lashed
out at a rare on the record
Ambassador critic, from Kenya,
calling him “unfair.”

This as Guterres
and his head of Communications
Alison Smale kept the critical
Press restricted, refusing
even to offer any explanation,
using three time loser Maher
Nasser to issue new
threats. Even when the budget
was cut and Inner City Press
alone covered it, with one of
Smale's minders to 2
am on Christmas Eve,
Guterres was gone, in
Portugal, an absentee UN
slowly collapsing in on itself
like a small star, refusing
even on the last work day of
the year to answer any Press
questions, here.
To be continued...

***

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